Life Lessons from 4 INFJ Superheroes

If you’re an INFJ, you may have decided that comic books are not something to get serious about. You’re probably right. But, every now and then, one of the characters surprises me with a depth and message that I appreciate and even feel inspired by. Their superpowers represent the most beloved of our INFJ ideals, and getting lost in their stories can ignite our own dreams. 

These four INFJ superheroes speak to me on a visceral level and offer me a peek into my own psyche. For this INFJ, seeing the best and the most challenging parts of myself in a bigger-than-life picture is stirring. Let’s see if you agree.  

Batman-The Strategic Crusader  

“Tonight, I am the law." 

I know you are shouting “But Batman is an INTJ!” Well, lower your voice, because I’m going to show you why you’re wrong. And don’t be too hard on yourself, because our cultural bias against INFJ males makes them oh-so hard to spot, so it’s understandable that you missed that Batman is a Feeler, not a Thinker, and I can prove it. 

You know all that “I am the law” stuff? It doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t it irrational for one man (with no supernatural powers) to wage war, by himself, on all the evildoers of a large metropolis? The filthy rich Bruce Wayne could hire an army of mercenaries that could get the job done, lickety-split, but he chooses instead his one-man, up-close, in-the-gutter crusade, fighting one beastly criminal at a time. He grapples with the monsters hand-to-hand with all his heart. A Thinker? I think not.  

So why does Batman make this unreasonable decision? Because he wants to make Gotham a safer city than the one in which his parents were murdered. The memory of his mother and father – and the way they were killed while walking home after a family night at the theater – is continually before him, and he is determined to rid Gotham of these murderous thugs. Batman is motivated by his devastation and anger at the slaying of the two people that cared for him the most, and he wants to save everyone else from this pain. That’s the decision-making process of a Feeler. 

Oh, and his no-kill code? That’s to save the bad guys’ families from the trauma he suffered. Even his most diabolical, dangerous enemies get a pass. He knows they will harm innocents again, and logic would say that taking these murderers out would save countless lives. Yet, he knows it would also hurt the ones who are closest to them. Feeler. 

So, if you dismiss The Dark Knight’s deeply nuanced capacity for empathy and moral justice, that’s your bad. But hey, nobody’s perfect.  

Lesson: Don’t succumb to pressure to abandon your most treasured values in favor of “reason.” Living your life as a Feeler is who you are. 

Daredevil-The Tortured Vigilante  

“I’m an endless contradiction that’d never stand up to cross-examination” 

Daredevil is deliciously dark. I guess his name implies that. The way I take it is that he “dares” to be sinful enough to beat the bad guys. He sees the world as full of evil but worse, he fears the evil might be inside him. Matt Murdock exemplifies that complicated relationship we sometimes have with ourselves when we brave the darkest nooks of our INFJ psyche, afraid of what we might find.  

It’s bewitching, that combination of courage and vulnerability. Daredevil is afraid of nothing except what might be lurking in his own soul, poised to be unleashed and cause harm to the people he loves most. He’s got that obvious INFJ inner angst that fuels his belief that he must always be vigilant – after all, only he can save the innocent lives that are threatened by the malevolence in Hell’s Kitchen. Talk about pressure. A pressure that has, more than once, caused him to break down and question his own identity and moral character.  

But back to that other thing about the evil inside him. Matt goes to great lengths to avoid those demons but, as any superhero will attest, sometimes beating the asses of those murderous villains when they threaten your city means cutting loose the devil from within. Yep, this is serious. But in Matt’s case, that devil gets people killed, or so he thinks. Like, it got his best friend Foggy shot, and he couldn’t save him. And the guy that shot Foggy? Daredevil threw him off a roof because his no-kill code isn’t as strict as Batman’s, because of that darkness thing.  

All this despair you say, what’s the point of it? Maybe I should have started with the fact that, even amid the darkness, Daredevil has the resilience, empathy and moral character of a self-actualized INFJ. This is what always, without fail, brings him back to the selfless good that’s at the core of his heart. In the end, he feels love and not hate, compassion and not anger, hope and not despair. He gets up. He makes it back. He goes on.  

Lesson: Always believe that you have the power to overcome the darkness. Your well-developed intuitive compass will bring you back to the good inside of you and others. 

Vision-The Ancient Soul  

“I know it's not of this world ... but... its true nature is a mystery. And yet it is part of me.” 

Okay, his name is Vision. Do I need to say anything else? And that quote? That’s referring to that little thing called the Mind Stone that gives this Android life. The Mind Stone was one of six Infinity Stones sent soaring through space after the Big Bang and predates the universe itself. How’s that for an old soul? Vision is made sentient by its mysterious nature, and he is on a constant quest to understand it. Sound familiar, my INFJ friends? 

Deeply thoughtful and mostly quiet, Vision strives to process his own complicated reality and ponders the paradox of his existence. He is a synthetic creation that is more conscious than any human, and even his makers can’t establish who he really is: “I’m not what you are, and not what you intended...”  

Vision mystifies those around him as much as he mystifies himself. As he evolves as a living being, he develops deep, complex emotions – “But  what is grief, if not love persevering?” – and a nobility that puts him firmly on the side of the collective good. “I am on the side of life,” he says. You’ve got to love this!

But while Vision struggles to define himself, there was one thing he knew from the start – that he would fight to protect humanity. So he confronts Ultron, the dark and powerful threat to humankind, and kills him with an energy beam from the Mind Stone – the very thing that was at the core of his being and gave him his life.. 

I know what you’re thinking. Vision is just a made-up character in the Marvel Comic Universe, and I need to get a life. But if you are honest, fellow INFJs, Vision’s longing to grasp his own otherworldly nature lives in you too. And as he said of his own elusive essence, “I  wish to understand it. The more I do, the less it controls me. One day, who knows? I may even control it.”

Lesson: Don’t be afraid to dive deeply into your own soul to discover who you are. What you will find there is the very thing that the world needs. 

Professor X- The Empathic Master 

“I open my mind up and it almost overwhelms me.” 

Professor X is the INFJ whisperer. He’s the ultimate empath who believes in the innate goodness of his mutant students and takes them to their destined heights to pursue a united, hopeful world. “You have the chance to become part of something much bigger than yourself,” he tells them. His big-picture goal is to bring peace not only to his pupils, but to the world, INFJ style. This mentor to the X-Men is the dedicated heart behind a grand vision to establish harmony and compassion to both mutants and humans.  

But Professor X gets his amazing leadership skills from his own INFJ awesomeness. You know how we sometimes take on the emotions of others and become exhausted? Well, he does that to over-the-top excess, connecting to the emotional landscape of the entire world. Why? Because he believes that if he could feel and understand human fears, he might be able to bridge the divide between humans and mutants. I guess overstimulation is an understatement. But he wants to discover a way to bring harmony and acceptance to a world torn apart by hate. Now that’s an INFJ bad ass.  

With hope for “a world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes," Professor X embraces being different and teaches his students to  do the same. He promises them, “There's so much more to you than you know. Not just pain and anger. There's good, too. I felt it. And when you can access all of that, you'll possess a power no one can match. Not even me.” 

Okay, Professor X is just a made-up comic book guy and you may think I’m corny to say this. But when an INFJ overcomes adversity and society’s judgement, learns to accept themselves for all that they are, and uses this understanding to bring good to others, they’re a badass too. If you are an INFJ, you also have a rich inner world of cognitive superpowers, and the way that Professor X puts it is, "When an individual acquires great power, the use or misuse of that power is everything. Will it be used for the greater good?” 

Lesson: Understand, accept and protect your empathic superpowers. With them, you can change the world, one relationship at a time.